2002 Pasadena Xena Convention

My Opening Thoughts

From The Tavern Wall
Mon. February 18, 2002; 2:46 am

Even now, as I've just returned from the 'burb at this late hour, I write these words with tear-stained eyes. It comes and goes in waves, as it has been all weekend. So many emotions, so many amazing experiences, so much to comprehend, so much love... so much pain...

I wanted to write some things down before drifting off to sleep, although I'm not tired despite everything that's happened today. However, I find myself at a loss for words. I miss my new family... For all of us there, this weekend truly became a very close and powerful mass of energy. We experienced this horrific tragedy together - fan and star alike. None of us will ever be the same, nor will we forget these past few days for the rest of our lives... It's ironic, but I truly believe that I would not have wanted to be any place else during this time of shock, horror, disbelief, sorrow, pain, and comfort.

I'm sorry... it's just too much...

~Sarah


For me, the Pasadena Xena Convention was the best place to be the weekend the news came of Kevin Smith's tragic death... as I hope you will come to understand by reading my report.

We miss you Kevin! This is for you...


A reminder: I'm terrible at word for word quotes and minute-by-minute details. What you'll get here is my impressions of things from my personal experience and perspective. Don't take my quotes literally. There will be much paraphrasing going on. I'm sure you'll find more event details in other reports, so put them all together and you'll have a broad enough picture to get a strong sense of the whole experience. Just to cover my ass, you should know that I am a highly emotionally person... You've been warned.

DISCLAIMER: The following is a purely subjective view of what happened during the convention weekend.


My Report: Day 1 - Friday

I got there between 11 and 11:30 am and quickly found my chat board friends, Smsolo and her daughter in front of the Civic Center. There wasn't much of a crowd. Of course, compared to last year, any other Xenite gathering would seem small. Though I gathered it was pretty much back to the normal numbers of fan attendance for these things. Last year was certainly the exception, not the rule. I actually felt more comfortable with the smaller group. It was much more intimate (as intimate as you can get in that huge auditorium). The biggest plus being I was able to ask all of my questions to the actors during their Q&A's. Unfortunately, I was one of the few who had decent questions for these beautiful people, but we all survived.

After handing in my ticket and getting my wristband and program, we checked into the Sheraton at noon (I slept on the floor of my friend's hotel room Friday and Saturday nights - Thank You, Thank You! - it made a world of different to my experience, being there the whole time like that). In addition, at noon they opened the doors to the convention center. So, after dumping our stuff in the room, we headed into the convention. I immediately went to the photo table to pick up all the pix I needed for autographs that weekend, plus a few extra of X&G and Gab solo. I then found my seat... Fifth row... Dead center! I couldn't have asked for more. (Oh to have been in that seat last year... *sigh*) Upon finding my seat, I met a woman named Penny from San Diego sitting in front of me who offered to send me any good pictures she took of the weekend. She had quite a professional camera set up, so I naturally jumped at the chance and gave her my address. (She was also very generous to take pictures of me and all the guests at the charity breakfast, so I'll be putting those and many others onto my website when I get them.)

First on the program was a lovely video set to Bette Midler's "One True Friend" (I don't think I need to describe it for you ). Then came the video "Coffee Talk." Anyone who buys the fan kit is in for quite a treat. The fun and ease that Lucy and Renee share with each other, sitting on LL's guest bed, flipping through the 2002 calendar, was a joy to behold. No intrusion from anyone. They just sat there chatting away, reminiscing about the episodes that were being depicted in the pictures. I won't (nor could I) give you a word for word, play-by-play of it (I encourage you all to buy it and see it for yourself), but one of my strongest impressions is how aggressive ROC was in the conversation. LL could hardly get a word in edgewise. Of course, she managed well enough, and in doing so showed that she might have been doing some homework since the show ended by actually watching some episodes. She was much more familiar with plots and even ep titles than ever before. I was impressed how she managed to hold her own with ROC. Good for her! Of course, pictures are great memory enhancers, so who knows.

Some highlights I can quickly think of: ROC trying to straighten LL's hair by licking her own hand and smoothing LL's bangs. To which LL gets all disgusted and jokes about ROC's spit in her hair, prompting ROC to do it even more. There were some highly amusing exchanges about the kissy of life in Friend in Need - "...when you dribbled spit in my mouth" kind of things. LL praised ROC on her Belle character in Many Happy Returns. She really liked ROC in that role. ROC countered the compliment by pointing to the picture of LL as the man and saying, "That's scary!" LL mentioned how they ad-libbed a flirtation between the two of them in that scene and wondered if anyone noticed. (DUH!)

There were so many stories pouring from them I can't remember them all. Plus, it was often hard to understand them sometimes do to either them overlapping each other (which they did a lot) or us laughing too loudly. However, it was a wonderful opportunity to see our gyrls interacting in their most adorable (and concentrated) way. What can I say? Their chemistry is unmatched!

Finally, at the end, they brought in their two boys. Miles was sooo beautiful (DUH!) though you couldn't see much of him cause ROC had her finger in his mouth most of the time. However, she tried to adjust him at one point to give the camera a fuller view of him. It was so sweet to see ROC holding him and caressing his head. Beautiful. Meanwhile, LL did the typical mommy thing, trying to get Julius to talk about stuff... the boo-boo on his knee, trucks, etc. What a cutie! A little chunky fella with platinum blonde hair and the sweetest little Kiwi accent. (Humorous side note from Sharon D.: without thinking, LL peeked in and checked Julius's diaper at one point. LOL! She was so embarrassed when she realized later that she'd done that on camera. ) It was wonderful to see them both in their "mommy" roles... and together again, too.

Moving right along... Claire Stansfield (Alti) was the first live guest of the weekend. She was her typical gracious self, sharing her love of us while we gave back the same to her. She mentioned quite a few times, how special and rare it is that this show has brought so many people together. We're truly a family. I asked her about directing and she encouraged fledgling directors to get their hands on a video camera and some digital equipment and just start shooting. She is very much learning as she goes. She talked about her experiences with Virginia Hey (Farscape) whom she lived with in England for a time when she was 17, as well as her more recent interactions with Claudia Christian (Babylon 5), and how hard it is for actresses as they get older. She remembered thinking even at 17, watching Virginia struggle and worry about getting work the older she got, how she didn't want that to happen to her. She said the Claudia, who's in her 30's, recently auditioned for a 40 something year old character and was told she was too old for the part! Because of this, Claire is looking more towards directing as her career.

Another thing from Claire was her Marton Csokas (Borias) bashing. I had heard her tell the story of how he threw her out of the tent, but this time she just kept going, playing up on her "dislike" of the man. It was pretty funny actually. She also told of how Karl Urban farted during their sex scene in When Fates Collide, and how funny he thought it was. She of course just relished stabbing him even more after that.

Next, we had Tsianina Joelson (Varia), who learned quickly from last year how to dress appropriately at a convention. She had on black pants and a black, long sleeved sweater. She even pointed this out when some one asked her about her first experience at a convention and her first time on the show. She was like, "They made me flex!" in this "can you believe that?" kind of way. Very cute. She told of her first day in New Zealand and how she arrived very early in the morning and wanted to go out immediately and start seeing everything. She asked for directions for a good place to eat breakfast, but then ended up in a not so nice part of town. She immediately turned around and went back to the hotel for breakfast. Then the first thing on the job was wardrobe. She couldn't believe they were making her wear a bikini... especially to do all that fighting! She kept begging them to lower the front panel, which they did a little bit. She also said that Path of Vengeance is her favorite ep cause she got to fight ROC! She said that was awesome and that the two of them did it all except for the flips. It was great because ROC is so good and Tsianina was very comfortable with the fighting by then, so they felt safe doing it all themselves. She was very impressed, and disturbed by all the blood used on Gab.

She then told of how during the plank fight with LL, she was twirling the staffs and worried that one of the posts would get in the way. Being a part of the set, the post naturally couldn't be removed, so she went ahead with the routine. Then at one point, her arm flew back and rammed so hard into the post that her arm dislocated at the shoulder. However, the momentum of her arm motion made it fly back over and pop back into place. "It was soooo gross!!" A delightful young woman! She's auditioning for a pilot soon, so send her lots of positive juju. She deserves it.

Autographs with Claire and Tsianina followed for gold patrons (that's me!), during which I said some stupid comment to Claire about offering myself as her slave for her directing projects. Then I joked with Tsianina about how I had had a feeling she'd be wearing something quite different this year, as well as praised her for being such a good sport last year. They were both very sweet.

While waiting to be called for autographs, they showed S6 bloopers (a good selection). Then they showed Many Happy Returns. Stupid me didn't realize the significance of showing this ep on Friday until after it started... Friday was ROC's birthday!! I was called to the autograph table in the middle of it, so I missed the rest... as well as the Ares music video (and whatever they had to say about Kevin at the time - the news hadn't arrived yet).

I now can't remember whether I got back in time for the Joxer/Autolycus videos and Ted Raimi and Bruce Campbell's entrance of not. I don't think I did. I believe they were already on stage by the time I got back into the main room, after the autographs. At any rate, having Ted and Bruce on stage together was an inspired idea. Ted kept Bruce from being too acerbic and Bruce kept the audience from getting too lovey-dovey with Ted. Lots of goofiness and sparring of words. Ted is one of the twitchiest people, though! However, he's still very funny. I am annoyed, though, that he didn't take my request for a song seriously. I asked him to sing something in his real voice, not his Joxer voice, but then all these idiot people () started shouting out "Joxer the Mighty." So of course, he did his usual audience participation thing, getting a bunch of people on stage to help him sing it. He had Bruce lead the two male audience members who came up in singing the "bump bump bump's" while Ted tried to get the women to sing the verse right. It was a complete disaster, even after 3 or 4 tries, and of course, you couldn't hear any of Ted's good singing voice, so... I was deeply disappointed.

There were more serious moments too, thanks to Bruce. He brought up Ngila Dickson's costume nomination for Lord of the Rings, pointing out that now we can all thumb our noses at the Emmy people who completely ignored her work on Herc and Xena all those years. She's the same woman, doing the same kinds of ingenious, creative work. Now, finally, people are rightfully taking notice. Big cheers on that one! Also a bit of info of particular interest to me was when Bruce talked about directing Hudson in the Herc ep In Case You're Just Now Joining Us. He really appreciated her willingness to do and try anything. It was her idea to have her in the business suite throughout the entire ep. They were working on the idea of her character being on the outside of the group all the time, and then she suggested the suite. Bruce was like, "but the first scene we're shooting takes place in a sauna." And she goes, "That's my point." Brilliant!

Ted was asked who kisses better, LL or ROC, and after twitching, hemming and hawing for a bit he said, "Lucy is a great kisser... and Renee is a great kisser." At which point Bruce chimed in and pointed out that in The Quest he got to put his hand on ROC's butt... "That woman is FIT!" Then Ted said that in Married With Fishsticks he had to slap her on the butt, which he demonstrated in the air and cringed upon "impact." "Ouch!" Buns of steel, indeed!! LOL! "That is a FIT WOMAN!!"

After TR & BC, came a music video for Draco (in Jay's absence) and then the start of ushering the gold patrons in to get T & B's autographs, during which they showed Send in the Clones. I recently ranted about this ep, claming I never wanted to see it again. However, I must confess that taken out of context, watched just on it's own, it can be a cute ep. IOW, I didn't mind it so much this time.

When finally getting into the autograph lines, Bruce was very nice and sweet, but didn't do a lot of chitchatting. Ted, on the other hand, had his line backed up so long with all of his lengthy interactions with people that Bruce finished his line before Ted was even half way finished with his. Naturally, they both contributed to the back up by stopping every once in a while, getting up on their chairs and sparring some more (to our amusement). Then, as Bruce was finishing his last few signatures, he got up on his chair and started making fun of the situation. Ted tried to get in on it and throw something right back at him, but he looked out and saw the truth of the matter, and in mid sentence he cut himself off with, "Shit! My line is long!!" He immediately sat back down and got to work. For my part, I had him sign a great action shot of him from For Him the Bell Tolls, and told him that that was my favorite Joxer ep and that he honored Danny Kaye very well. He seemed to be very taken by that and thanked me sincerely. Nice.

So ends the day portion of my Friday report.

Copyright - Sarah Mears, 2/18/02; Edited: 2/24/02
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